OpenMOCA™

Questions from the bench

What does MOCA stand for?

MOCA stands for Modular Ontology, Content & Attestation: knowledge in modular packages that can be assembled into larger ones, organized by an optional ontology, with attestations and signatures that prove who published it and who checked it.

Is MOCA a vector database?

No. A package is a file format for knowledge and a Reader is a library that reads it. Search can run over the package's own text, over a sidecar index of vectors built for it, or through your own vector database, with the Reader applying the same trust rules to each.

Is MOCA an alternative to RAG?

No. It is what you put into retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). A MOCA package gives a RAG pipeline knowledge with its version, its structure and its sources, so every answer can cite a passage that can be checked, and content that is out of date or for another audience is left out before the model sees it.

Can it run offline, or on infrastructure we control?

Yes. Readers are libraries that run in your process and never reach the network because a package names something. A package carries its sources, so quotes are checked offline, and signatures are verified against keys you list. Lexical search needs nothing else; semantic search needs only an embedding model you run yourself.

Is it free, and who is behind it?

Yes. The specification, Readers and tools are open source under Apache-2.0. OpenMOCA™ is maintained by PI & Mash Solutions Ltd, which holds the OpenMOCA™ trademark on behalf of the project.